Out of the Dead Land
by tenrousei-kuroi
Summary: The Call to Action comes for Zoey Redbird. AU-esque.


**Hello.** I am very much a Harry Potter person so I'm a little out of my element here. Is there much of a House of Night fanbase? I really don't know why I wrote this. I was just musing around with some of my other projects and thought maybe I'd give first person narratives a second chance and HoN seemed as good a place to start as any.

I actually have about five chapters of this written, and the rest are considerably longer than this little prologue. I'll put them up later if people seem to like this at all.

This story along with that _Loveless_ thing I wrote a while back might seriously only exist to distract people from my obvious obsession with Sirius/Regulus .

**And just a heads up**, when I say AU, I fucking _mean_ AU. I know this starts out almost exactly the same as the real series, but after the first chapter or so I kinda' went off the rails. Dunno' if that's a good or a bad thing…

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**Prologue**

There was a dead girl standing right outside my classroom, and all I could think was that I couldn't let her touch me.

Everyone else filed out of the history room, unconcerned. Lines of my classmates walked right past her, unable or unwilling to notice her as she stood with impatiently cocked hips and single finger waggling in my direction.

_No, I don't want to go with you._

Fear welled up in my body. I knew what she was there for; this was the very thing everyone _dreaded,_ but it had never happened at my high school before. A messenger sent to drag you away from your family, your friends, your _life._ That was something to be noted as having happened to _so-and-so, 8__th__ grader, Lakewater Junior High, _approximately sixty miles away, or _what's-her-face, sophomore, Milson High School,_ clear on the other side of the state.

Never here.

And certainly _never_ to me.

My friend, Kayla, crashed bluntly into me from behind. "Zoey," she griped, poking me with a dastardly long nail. "You're blocking the doorway, woman, _move._"

I staggered to the side a few steps, and pressed my back against the wall. My jacket immediately crumpled and pulled down several stapled up papers. I was shaking, and my backpack began to slip from my hand, inching closer to the carpet.

Soon everyone had cleared out, and headed to their lockers to deposit all the textbooks they didn't want to take home with them, and I was left there, trembling and alone with the sordid, silent messenger.

She heaved a dramatic sigh and began to saunter over to me. I was panting at this point, and glancing frantically from left to right. "Oh my god," I moaned. "No…get away, I'm not the one you're here for!"

A boy a grade or two above me, Michael Something-or-Other, turned briskly out of the room across the hall, twirling his car keys. When he saw me cowering against the bulletin board, he stopped and looked at me quizzically.

I was crying at that point, and aware of myself enough to be briefly embarrassed about that fact.

_Please let this be a mistake,_ I begged. _Turn around, you dead bitch, go for him instead. Please let it be him you were waiting for all along!_

But she didn't turn around. Her cold stride quickened, and she jerked herself over to me. Face not two feet from my own, she reached out a hand.

"I don't want to _go_ with you," I sobbed. Michael's eyes widened as he put two and two together. Jaw agape, he scattered off towards the parking lot.

"No!" I screamed at him as he ran off like a coward, unwilling to help me and most likely hurrying to tell everyone the juicy news. Zoey Montgomery's been claimed by the vampires. Well, either that or she's finally lost what was left of her mind. Whichever way, it's pretty good gossip.

I felt cold all over, and the dead girl was reaching her hand out to my face, a strange little smile on her pale lips. Suddenly, my body snapped back to life. I tightened my failing grip on the strap of my backpack and swung up for all I was worth, hitting her squarely in the neck with twenty pounds of history and calculus text.

She let out a raspy screech and tumbled to the ground. My backpack was snagged on her collar, and so I came crashing down with her.

It took a second for the information that I was lying directly on top of a walking corpse to sink into my brain.

"Fuck!" I yelled, repulsed. My voice hit a high pitch usually reserved for calling dogs and broke. Coughing and frantic, I rolled off of her and to my feet. I yanked my backpack up onto my shoulder and I ran down the hallway and out the nearest door.

The bright May sunlight took me off guard and I stumbled a little on the sidewalk outside the school. Where the hell did I park my car?

There it was, the bright blue one at the far end of the lot. I sprinted towards it. Kayla and some other students I didn't know too well were gathered around the area, talking and planning for the weekend.

"Move!" I panted, pushing people out of my way.

Everyone scattered. Even Kayla, who was looking at me with eyes so wide I wasn't entirely certain they could be classified as human anymore.

"Zoey?" she said in a panicky voice. "Michael said…are you…"

"No!" I yelled, exasperated. _You've just been told your best friend is being abducted by a dead body and you immediately gather around her vehicle like a car-jacking vulture to discuss weekend plans with half the football team, Kayla? _"And they're not going to take me, okay? Now get out of the way before I run you all over!"

I dropped my keys twice before I got them in the door lock. I chanced a look behind me.

The dead girl was lounging under the eve of the school building, arms folded and leaning against one of the tall, concrete pillars. She shook her head sadly at me and I couldn't help but feel a little chastised somewhere underneath all my panic and fear.

"Did one of them really come for you?" gasped a freshman somewhere to my left.

"Fuck off or I turn you into roadkill," I muttered angrily. I threw myself into my car and reversed so fast the tires squealed. Everyone was out of my path.

Once inside my vehicle I felt safe. Messengers only came to the schools, so far as I knew. Now I was in a car and driving home…

_Come and get me now, bitch,_ I though triumphantly. The metal shield of my car gave me hitherto unseen confidence and I drove nice and slowly past where the dead girl stood. With a definite smugness to my expression, I flipped her off and drove out into the street. When I glanced back in my mirror, she was gone.

I pulled into the driveway of my mother's husband's house, but I didn't get out of the car. I was thinking very hard. Biting my lip, I took out my phone and dialed the only number I knew by heart.

_(309) 555-1298_

I had to have it memorized. I couldn't very well add it to my speed dial or contacts list because of my mother's husband…the son of a bitch checked my phone on a regular basis.

"_Hello, is this Zoey?"_

"Yes," I whispered, relieved.

"_I thought so; you show up on Sylvia's caller ID as 'uwetsiageya', so I figured it had to be you. What's going on, my little, dark-skinned daughter?"_

I laughed a little in spite of myself. "N-nothing," I lied. "Listen, Aaron, why do you have my grandmother's phone? Can I talk to her?"

"_She's on her lunch break, I'm watching her post for her. Did you want me to have her call you?"_

"No," I said. "Just when you see her next, please let her know that I'll be coming to stay with her for a little while."

"_Honey, she won't mind that at all."_

"I know, but she might appreciate the warning. I'll be over later this afternoon if all goes well."

"_Okay, I'll tell her for you."_ The unsaid 'what's happened now?' sat heavy in the air.

"Thank you, Aaron, have a good day at work." I hung up the phone and shoved it back into my pocket.

I took a deep breath and got out of the car. I opened the garage door and peered inside. There was only one car, my sister's broken one, so neither my mother nor that man were home. I hustled into the house and went straight to my room. Numbly, I began to shove all my dearest belongings into my duffel bag.

I needed to leave. My grandma would know what to do, she always did. If I stayed here, they'd make me go back to school…unless I told them I'd been selected to take the mark, and then I wasn't sure what would happen to me. They wouldn't let me be taken, most likely; they'd chain me to my room if they had to…but from then on I'd be treated like a freak.

I snorted to myself in derision. I could think of nothing that would anger my stepfather more than my becoming a vampire. Or as the case may be, even the _thought_ that I had the DNA for it. I could almost picture my mother right then, in tears before him thinking it was her faulty genes that made me this way, and sobbing over my brother and sister, wondering if either of them was defective as well.

Then her husband would kick in with some pseudo-religious nonsense, yammer on about how he knew I was no good from the start…

Angrily, I yanked my good jacket off its hanger so fast the metal wire spun around the bar twice before clacking to the floor. I was working myself up. This wasn't good; I needed to calm down.

"Okay," I muttered to myself, closing my eyes. "Here's what's going to happen. I'll leave Mom a note. I'll lay low at Grandma Redbird's for a while until this whole thing blows over…

"If they can't get ahold of me right away, then they'll just stop. Right? So long as I stay away from school and that messenger, I'm still human. I'm _still_ human," I said again, touching my face as if to somehow reassure myself. The soft flesh against my fingertips did little to calm my nerves.

"Okay," taking deep breaths, I scribbled a note on a legal pad telling my mother I was going away for a few days. _He_ wouldn't like this, because I was doing it without his permission, but once I was out the door, what could he do? Drive to Grandma's and drag me away by my collar? Not likely, I still remembered a good deal of the jujitsu I used to take before he'd made me drop out; also Grandma had guns.

I left the note on the phone by my mother's side of the bed. She always checked it straight when she got home, to see if anyone from church had called. Then I left a similar note taped to my brother's headset telling him to call me if he or our sister ever needed _anything._

I returned to my bedroom, adrenaline chugging through my body again. Was I forgetting anything?

At first I thought I was good to go, but then I remembered my glasses. Normally I left them in their case on the windowsill. Swiftly I pushed aside the curtains and grasped the velvety black case. I shoved them into my bag, then set about readjusting the strap because it was cutting painfully into my shoulder.

"Damn," I shook my arm a little. "Whatever."

I turned to close the curtains again, and immediately screamed.

There she was, sunken zombie eyes three inches and one pane of glass away from my own. She winked at me wryly from behind greasy, limp bangs.

I threw myself away from the window and stumbled to the other end of the room, heart racing. "Get _away_ from me," I cried. "_Leave me alone!"_

Shaking like mad, I looked up again and could no longer see her. I was positive I hadn't imagined it, so where had she gone? And what was going on, anyway? Messengers only ever showed up at schools, I told myself. I had assumed that meant they couldn't go anywhere else.

_But maybe it's just that no one's ever pulled a runner before,_ I thought.

I jumped again when I heard the front door creaking open. I swore under my breath; I hadn't locked it.

I had to think fast. Seeing no other options, I pushed open my window. It slid easily and silently. Then I leaned over to my bookshelf and turned on my stereo. With shaky hands, I set the timer to keep playing for about ten minutes and then cranked the volume up to maximum. Some god-awful country-pop crossover song was on and I resisted the reflexive urge to sigh heavily and change the station.

Using the loud music to cover up the noise I was about to make so the dead girl wouldn't guess what I was doing and hurry herself, I deftly punched out my screen. It clattered to the concrete outside, unheard. I threw my duffel bag out the window.

She had to be down the hallway now, close to my door. Gripping my keys so hard they dug rivets into my palm, I heaved myself onto the windowsill. Give it one more second…just to be sure she came down this way and wasn't lying in wait just inside the front door…

The knob on my door started turning. That was it; I chucked myself backwards and landed with a painful thud on top of my discarded screen.

Moaning in pain, I picked myself up, grabbed my bag and hastily chucked the screen inside my room to delay how long it would take for either parent to notice anything was amiss. Then I hustled to my car, clambered inside, and gunned it out onto the road, the roar of the engine and my own disjointed panting not quite enough to cover up my blaring getaway music.

I couldn't stop my shaking hands from slipping all over the wheel, but neither could I force myself to pull over. I needed to put as much space, people and preferably continents between me and that deceased nuisance as possible.

"I hate you, Bethany," I growled at my dashboard. I decided to name her after the much-hated country singer who had helped to facilitate my second getaway. It seemed fitting.

That's Zoey Montgomery. Can't catch a break and fast running out of escape ideas.

My Grandmother's house was in the hills. I drove past fields and the occasional clump of misappropriate trees on that windy, little road I knew so well. Just past the lavender patch I slowed to a stop and parked in her driveway. The smell that greeted me when I stepped out of the car was the scent of home.

For a spell, the dead messenger was driven from my mind as the feeling of being _where I belonged_ encapsulated me. My stepfather, Kayla, the rumors that were surely circulating about me by now…they all seemed so far away to me where I stood, an hour out of town in the middle of a gravel drive with a duffel bag at my feet and my arms outstretched wide. Eyes closed, I inhaled deeply once more before traipsing up to the house and letting myself in.

Grandma Redbird was not surprised at all by my presence.

"Open the cupboard there," she said as soon as she stepped in the door. I had bounded up immediately to hug her but paused in mid-glomp upon hearing her words.

"Over there, go on," she repeated.

"Okay," I opened the door and saw to my delight, something covered in tin foil and sitting innocently next to the breakfast cereal that looked like suspiciously like a cake of some kind.

"Vanilla," I marveled, tearing into it immediately with a knife.

"I knew you'd be here," she said, setting down her bag and walking into the other room. "I'll be back in a minute, Zoey, I just need to change out of these work clothes."

"Oh, did Aaron tell you then?" I asked conversationally, misinterpreting what she had said.

"Tell me what?" came the reply from down the hall. I straightened up from the counter, knife in hand, and bit my lip.

"You scare me sometimes, Grandma," I said, setting cake slices down at the table.

"Do I now?" she came back into the kitchen. "Well that's good; when you're old like me you don't intimidate too many people, I'll take what I can get!"

I laughed.

"So what brings you here, Zoey Redbird?" Grandma Redbird asked in mock serious as we both started eating. I couldn't help but smile through a mouthful of frosting at the sound of my mother's real last name, the one I preferred.

"Nothing much," I said flippantly. "Just the usual, sibling trauma, best friend dating the boy I like behind my back, mommy and daddy won't let me go to the rock concert…"

Grandma Redbird snorted into her plate, but when she looked back up at me with her deep, brown eyes they were still laced with concern.

I dropped the fake teenage girl tone.

"A messenger showed up at school for me today," I admitted sullenly. I set down my fork, unable to continue eating. "I ran home before she could touch me, but…she followed me!"

"Followed you home?"

"Yes!" I cried. "I wasn't aware they could _do_ that! Grandma, I don't even know what to do, I just got away as fast as I could. Can you _imagine_ how John is going to react to this?"

"Do you want to be a vampire, Zoey?" asked Grandma Redbird, ignoring the mention of my stepfather.

"Huh?" I blinked. She put it so simply, made it sound so reasonable, as if she were talking to me as I mulled over which college acceptance letter to follow through with.

"I…I don't think so, who would…who would _want_ to be a freak?"

Grandma Redbird was giving me a look. It was saying very tactfully, _Zoey, you and I both know that for all intents and purposes, you're a freak right here and now._

And it was true. Dry hair, dark skin, full face…none of it was terribly conducive to living a life of luxury down here in the south. My eyes flickered over to my grandmother's exposed forearm and I noted with interest that my own skin was the same hue, if not darker than her own. How that had happened when our family had been getting progressively lighter for generations, I had no idea. Hell, my own little brother could pass for "white with a tan" on even the sunniest of days. It was almost as if generations of Native American ancestry, frustrated at being so watered down over the years had finally converged at a mutual endpoint: me.

I was out of place here in this rural, Christian haven, but I didn't have it _that_ bad. Sure every available role model, hero, and celebrity was completely unrelatable and I was a 100% ignored marketing demographic, but did I really think things would be better as a _vampire?_ Was I seriously considering that to be my only option? Couldn't I just move to a larger, more diverse city? Why run the risk of becoming the Other of the _Others._

"Actually," I admitted. "I guess I'm not sure I have a choice. She followed me to my house, and she's probably followed me here. There's not a lot I can do, is there? I can't keep running forever, and I can't kill her, she's already _dead._"

Grandma Redbird collected our plates and slid them into the sink.

"And no one else can see her so it's not like I can enlist anyone to protect me…" I continued rambling on, staring at the wall by the window. "I don't know, Grandma, it's just…what if their world is worse? What if I'm better off staying here?"

"You'll never know which world is better until you've seen both, honey, and that's something not a lot of people get to do…"

"We know _nothing_ about them or how they live…what they do…I mean, _dammit_ this decision would be so much easier if someone knew what the hell was going on in that school they send all the reject, vampire kids to."

"Maybe the mystery makes it all the more worth it," Grandma Redbird said sensibly.

"Really, they have pamphlets for everything else in the guidance office at school, why can't they have one on _so you've been marked: what to expect when you're called upon to join the legions of the undead_ ?"

Suddenly the events of the day caught up to me and I heaved a single, dry sob. "There's no getting out of this, is there?" I moaned.

Grandma Redbird laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, and as if on cue, I collapsed facefirst into the kitchen table. So this was really the conclusion I had reached? Bitter acceptance. Grandma Redbird had probably been guiding me to this resignation all along but I couldn't find it in me to feel betrayed.

"It's scary," I murmured finally.

"I know," she whispered.

"It's going to get dark soon," I said, shaking. Grandma Redbird leaned down to my level and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "She's going to show up soon then…I don't know. Bite me, or attack me, or drag me away…"

"Sometimes the call to action can be a little scary."

"A little?" I snapped bitterly, sitting up straight again. "I was freaking horrified when she showed up after class today, and that was in broad _daylight._ I bashed her in the throat with my backpack," I admitted.

"Oh," said Grandma Redbird as she stood up. "Well…don't do that again."

"Yeah," I rolled my eyes and said sarcastically, "Let's just hope Bethany's missing the memory portion of her brain."

Grandma Redbird entertained me well into the night. We played several rounds of scrabble, watched a movie, and read for a while together from a very special book of fables my grandfather had written himself before he'd died. He and my grandmother had illustrated it together.

When it got to be around midnight, I left to the spare bedroom on my own. Grandma Redbird offered to sleep with me, but I refused, feeling that same sense of tired resignation and figuring I was as ready now as I was ever going to be.

The sheets were as cold as ice. I sat up against the headboard, idly twirling my phone in my shaking hands and staring directly out the window. I watched the shadows cast by the moon flip and twirl. They danced for a long while before I noticed one of them growing larger and larger, getting closer…

Let's see what's really on the other side.

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**One extra note:** We're not doing the 'Vampyre' thing, okay? This is not the eighteen hundreds, this is not England.


End file.
